Frustrated in their attempts to access information, seek compensation, and prevent future deaths, the families convinced the flamboyant lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, to take on what was thought to be a hopeless cause. Suddenly, the case seemed to promise a multi-million-dollar settlement. Large industrial concerns, as well as government officials, began to pay close attention. Obsessed with the enormity of the apparent crime, the creative Schlichtmann amassed a huge amount of damning evidence through careful and expensive scientific research. But the accused companies also invested large sums in experienced lawyers and scientists who used other data and legal technicalities to refute the charges. The families lost their case in 1986, and Schlichtmann was financially and emotionally ruined. By that time, 21 cases of leukemia had been identified – 4 times the anticipated rate for the population. A public health report found “no significant differences” in exposure between the leukemia cases and controls, yet concluded that “it is not possible to rule out exposure to this water as a factor” (Cutler et al 1986). 

Author Jonathan Harr began work on A Civil Action in 1986 before the opening of the trial, and he accompanied Schlichtmann to almost all meetings, relied on court transcripts, and conducted many painstaking interviews with the families and opposing lawyers. The result is an omniscient yet intimate perspective on these true events that reads like an action-packed thriller, complete with dialogue. It won many awards and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 65 weeks. It stands as an interesting commentary on the nature of environmental health and on the American justice system. 

Three years later, Steve Zaillian wrote and directed the award-winning film, A Civil Action (1998), based on Harr’s book and starring John Travolta and Robert Duvall. Shlichtmann received $250,000 for the portrayal rights, but is quoted as saying, “John Travolta made more money playing me than I ever did playing me” (Kix 2009). Forty years later, now at age 75, he continues to champion environmental causes, aiming for settlements rather than court cases and recounting his “lessons learned” on the speakers’ circuit. 

Woburn and A Civil Action had coincided with other prominent environmental disasters, caused by industrial failures: Three Mile Island (1979), Love Canal (1977-1979), Times Beach, Missouri (1983), Bhopal (1984), to name only a few. The book and the film contributed to rising awareness about the health risks of environmental damage, and they added to increasing skepticism over the intentions of private entrepreneurs and the courts. They also heralded a period that saw a growing body of legislation aimed to define responsibilities and regulate industrial pollution – measures coming, alas all too frequently, after new problems arose and covering jurisdictions defined only by political boundaries, which have nothing to do with the flow of water and air. In 2022, the United Nations declared that a healthy environment is a human right. Dozens of countries, including Canada (2023) and several American states, have enshrined that ideal in law, even if practicalities and protections lag far behind. 

Less known is that fact that Woburn triggered a public-health preoccupation with “clusters” and the nature of proof (Alexander et al., 1999; Kingsley et al., 2007) Do clusters indicate important dangers or are they unfortunate but random occurrences? A decade later, the Center for Environmental Health Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported on its vain “search for causes” in the industrial toxins of the Woburn leukemia cluster (Durant et al., 1995). In 2002, a controlled study, based on Woburn, failed to establish a causal correlation between disease and contamination; it pointed out that incidence had returned to anticipated levels, while 8 consecutive years had seen no leukemia cases at all (Costas et al., 2002). Woburn has also been cited in efforts to provide better statistical evaluation of “clusters” (Waller, 2000). Woburn prompted recommendations to incorporate qualitative methods into public heath reporting (Brown, 2003) and to recognize the value of citizen science and epistemic differences in lay and professional “ways of knowing” (Brown, 1992; Petteway et al, 2019). Woburn is still being cited in public health assessments of environmental causes of malignancy, often with ambiguous outcomes (Binczewski et al., 2026). 

A Civil Action helped prepare the terrain for these many studies with their controls, statistics, and tracking of chemicals–mind you, only those chemicals that are already recognized and detectable. We no longer question the harm in smog and smoking, while improvements in respiratory diseases proclaim the benefits of keeping air clean. It is dismaying that the idea of water pollution as a harm to human health continues to be such a hard sell, while disasters like Flint, Michigan, or Grassy Narrows, Ontario, roil on. 

Water degradation is bad for flora, for fauna, and for the planet. Therefore, it is bad for us too. But for industry, the courts, and even some epidemiologists in their many ways of knowing, it remains an unproven hunch. 

References 

• Alexander, Freda E. 1999. Clusters and clustering of childhood cancer: A review 
• European Journal of Epidemiology 15: 847-852.
• Binczewski, N.R., Morimoto, L.M., Wiemels, J.L., Richardson, D.B., Bartell. S.M., Metayer, C., Vieira, V.M. 2026. Spatial analysis of residential location at birth, PFAS in public water, and childhood cancers in Southern California (2000-2019). Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology 2026 Mar 5:10.1038/s41370-026-00850-1. doi: 10.1038/s41370-026-00850-1. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41781477; PMCID: PMC13032745. 
• Brown, Phil. 1992. Popular epidemiology and toxic waste contamination: lay and professional ways of knowing. Journal of Health & Social Behavior 33(3):267-81. 
• Brown, Phil. 2003. Qualitative methods in environmental health research. Environmental Health Perspectives 111(14):1789-98.  
• Costas, K., Knorr, R.S., Condon, S.K. 2002. A case-control study of childhood leukemia in Woburn, Massachusetts: the relationship between leukemia incidence and exposure to public drinking water. Science of the Total Environment 300(1-3):23-35. 
• Cutler, J.J., Parker, G.S., Rosen, S., Prenney, B., Healey, R., Caldwell, G.G. 1986. Childhood leukemia in Woburn, Massachusetts. Public Health Reports 101(2):201-5. 
• Durant, J.L., Chen, J., Hemond, H.F., Thilly, W.G. 1995. Elevated incidence of childhood leukemia in Woburn, Massachusetts: NIEHS Superfund Basic Research Program searches for causes. Environmental Health Perspectives 103 Suppl 6:93-8. 
• Kingsley, B.S., Schmeichel, K.L., Rubin, C.H. 2007. An update on cancer cluster activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Environmental Health Perspectives 115(1):165-71.  
• Kix, Paul. 2009. In the shadow of Woburn, Boston Magazine, City Life, 22 September:  https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2009/09/22/in-the-shadow-of-woburn
• Lagakos, S. W., Wessen, B. J., Zelen, M. 1986. An analysis of contaminated well water and health effects in Woburn, Massachusetts. Journal of the American Statistical Association 81(395):583–596.  
• Petteway, R, Mujahid, M., Allen, A., Morello-Frosch, R. 2019. Towards a people’s social epidemiology: Envisioning a more inclusive and equitable future for social epi research and practice in the 21st century. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 16(20):3983. 
• Waller, L.A. 2000. A civil action and statistical assessments of the spatial pattern of disease: do we have a cluster? Regulatory Toxicology & Pharmacology 32(2):174-83. 
• Jonathan Harr discusses A Civil Action on C-Span 

Web image by Medhum.org

Junger’s memoir, In My Time of Dying, begins with a vivid account of that potentially fatal event. An aneurysm of a mid-sized artery in his pancreas had burst, causing unchecked internal bleeding. At the hospital, Junger slipped into hypotension, hypothermia, and semi-consciousness before surgical repair, which gave him a last minute surgical “save.”  

However, the main focus of Junger’s memoir is his experience of coming “face-to-face with an afterlife.” In the hospital, his dead father appeared to him. His father “exuded reassurance and seemed to be inviting me to go with him.” (p. 37) While this was happening, Junger recalls being awake and speaking to a doctor. Much that follows is a sustained reflection on the meaning of near-death experiences, drawing on the published literature, anecdotal accounts, as well as his own encounter with dying. 

He recounts the story of Tyler Carroll, a combat medic in Afghanistan, who was critically wounded and, as he was near death, “his whole life presented itself to him simultaneously and in great detail, as if twenty-one years of experience could exist outside linear time.” (p. 80) This so-called “life review,” is a common feature of such experiences, as well as encountering deceased loved ones, hovering outside the body, moving through a tunnel of light, and “being filled with love and bliss.” (p. 82) Junger is particularly impressed with the feelings of universal unity, often followed by a profound change in patients’ perspectives on the meaning of life. In the bibliography, he cites dozens of studies documenting the prevalence and characteristics of such phenomena.  

The author was initially skeptical, “Was I blessed by special knowledge or cursed by it?” (p. 93) He first considers the view of most neuroscientists that near-death experiences are hallucinations created by the dying brain, “The overwhelming likelihood is that our sense of another reality is just a comforting illusion that helps us live our lives.” (p. 118) He then considers the minority report, i.e. well-structured visions and thought processes, along with specific memories of external events (e.g. happenings in the room) raise a number of perplexing questions about the functioning of an oxygen-starved brain.  

We have absolutely no idea how the interior world of subjectivity arises from electrical impulses in the brain. Subjectivity exists, although nothing we know about the most basic components of the universe as we know it—quarks, electrons, waves, fields—permits it. Consequently, the belief that further research on the brain itself will yield a key to consciousness must be mistaken. Junger sums up the situation, “Our understanding of reality might be as limited as a dog’s understanding of television.” (p. 118)  

Junger points out that reality at the deepest level (i.e. the quantum world) is full of paradoxes and seeming impossibilities. It fails to answer many questions about the universe, in addition to the origin of mental phenomena. Consequently, he provisionally accepts the philosophical theory of panpsychism, i.e. “consciousness is woven into the very structure of matter” (p. 136) In other words, every component (e.g. quarks, fields) of the universe has a mental aspect, as well as a physical one. (I might interject here that panpsychism is not a prevalent theory among philosophers of mind, because they believe it raises more problems than it solves.) Given this framework, Sebastian Junger concludes that human consciousness might continue after death as part of a universal consciousness. From the text, I don’t think he believes this afterlife would necessarily retain a sense of individual identity.  

My Time of Dying is a thoughtful reflection on the meaning of life from a man who has experienced a close encounter with death. Junger has created a compelling narrative, making his memoir worth reading whether you believe near-death psychic phenomena point the way toward an afterlife, or think they are hallucinations generated by the dying brain.  

1. Van Lommel P, R. van Wees, V. Meyers, and I Elfferich. Near Death Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands. Lancet 358 (2001): 2039=2045 

2. Parnia S. and P. Fenwick. Near Death Experiences in Cardiac Arrest: Visions of a Dying Brain or Visions of a New Science. Resuscitation 52, no. 1 (2002): 5-11 

In My Time of Dying
Sebastian Junger
New York, Simon & Shuster, 2024, 162 pp.
http://www.sebastianjunger.com/in-my-time-of-dying 
Web photo byu Sebastien Gabriel